The Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops has published their annual May 1st message, entitled "The Human Person at the Heart of Food Sovereignty

On this May 1, 2015, we wish to honour food workers everywhere. We owe our gratitude to those who plough and seed the ground, those who transform food and ensure its distribution. Their work is essential to our survival, responding to each person's right to have enough to eat, and they contribute to peoples' food sovereignty which is threatened by seed control and land-grabbing. They draw extraordinary resources from Mother Earth to feed seven billion men and women. Respect for the human person and for the Earth is at the heart of our food supply.

Like the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, we can define food sovereignty as "the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems."[1] It requires a delicate balance between the needs of peoples and the capacities of Mother Earth: altering the fragile balance of Mother Earth puts the most vulnerable populations in danger.

We face several challenges in maintaining this balance:

- Respect for workers, throughout the food supply chain;
- Respect for the people, who require healthy and affordable food;
- Respect for the Earth, whose resources are not inexhaustible.

Read the rest of the message here